


Tell me a story

by Wish_On_A_Wing



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Familial Feelings, Gen, Pod Squad - Freeform, Trip Down Memory Lane, and their childhood, and their love for each other, familial things, mild insinuations for domestic violence, set around s01e08-09, the emphasis is on the alien family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 06:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20004010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wish_On_A_Wing/pseuds/Wish_On_A_Wing
Summary: "After we left with our parents, it was three years, nine months and eight days before we saw Michael again."Liz is keeping Max company in the cave with Isobel, and asks him to tell her a story.





	Tell me a story

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! First Roswell nm fic, and first time writing in a LONG time.  
> Written for rnmweek2019, days 1 & 2 - when we were young & family. Posted a little late, sorry for the delay. I went over it a few times, but un-beta'd unfortunately (couldn't find one). Sorry about that.  
> Hope you enjoy!

"Tell me a story," Liz asked.

Max looked up at her. It was sweet of her to come sit with him while he watched over Isobel in her pod. She did it sometimes after she had finished at the hospital for the day. She never stayed long, and Max noticed that she never quite knew where to look. She'd sort of stare into her hands, or at the floor, or examine the folds and creases of the ceiling. She didn't feel comfortable there, Max knew, and it made him appreciate her company even more.

Liz raised her eyebrows at him and tilted her head slightly, waiting for an answer. He picked up his Dostoevsky in response, waving it at her.

Liz laughed, "no, no, no more dead Russian poets. Please. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like Notes from Underground as much as the next guy, but I don’t really feel like dwelling on the co-dependence of misery and bliss right about now."

"You've read it before?"

"Once. When Rosa was in rehab," she looked at him with her dark eyes, "Don’t sound so shocked about it, Max. I'm full of surprises."

"Oh, I know that much," he chuckled. "So then, what story do you want to hear?"

She averted her eyes back to the pile of books sitting between their chairs, "tell me about you. Tell me about your childhood."

That answer puzzled Max. He wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear. She knew him since the second grade. The big things – the ones she didn't know about until he saved her life, the ones that were kept so close to his chest that they scratched and scraped against his ribcage – he'd already told her all of those. As for the regular things, it's not like one Roswell childhood was that much different from another. It was a small town.

After a long moment passed in silence, he decided to ask, "how old were you when you first got drunk?"

She smiled, her dimples deepening. Max always loved her smile. It lit up her face like an oil lamp lights your way at night – not a blinding flash but a warm guidance, changing the entire scenery with its gentle presence. "Tell me a story, and maybe then I'll tell you."

He was half hoping she'd fall in his trap, but really he knew better. That's all right, though; he had a story for her.

"When we were thirteen," Max began, "My parents went to visit some friends who lived in Las Cruces – not really far enough to fly, plus it was way more expensive back then, but far enough to make the drive there and back too exhausting for one day. They weren’t gone long – just two days, I think – so they decided we were old enough to stay on our own."

"Oh boy," Liz tilted her head backwards with a smile, "here we go."

Max laughed a little despite himself. "Michael, Isobel an I decided to watch a movie. Michael showed up with a bottle of cheap whiskey and five or six bottles of nail polish remover. By then we'd already figured out that, much like the acetone did with our pain, it also helped to numb the sharp edges on our minds. Alcohol does, too, but I think perhaps not as much as it does to, you know, other people." He didn’t want to say humans. It always tasted bitter in his mouth. He didn't need any more barriers between himself and the rest of the world.

"Anyway, we went to the 'Blockbuster' to rent a movie with the money my mom left us."

"Oh god, I remember that place," Liz said fondly. "I loved going there as a kid. Maria actually worked there one summer, did you know? We watched so many movies that summer, I thought we were gonna ruin the video with over-use."

"Yeah, the time before Netflix definitely had its shining moments." Max agreed.

"So, you went to the 'Blockbuster'…" Liz prompted.

"Well, Michael wanted to watch The Ring – he had a thing for horror movies, the more absurd the better – and Isobel wanted to watch Legally Blonde, even though she'd already made us go with her when it was in the theaters. In the end we decided on a compromise. Michael suggested that we rent Men in Black II, but make in more interesting by turning it into a drinking game – we drank whenever one of us found it offensive. Let's just say we were very sensitive back then," Max stopped to laugh a little, the memory of the three of them drinking and cracking up so much they nearly fell off the couch coming fresh to his mind. "For weeks later, we couldn’t pass by a green alien plushie in the souvenir shops or even see a man in a black suit without bursting into hysterical laughter."

Liz laughed delightfully, throwing her head back. Max couldn’t help but join her – it was infectious. They laughed so hard their voices echoed off the cavern walls. The memories of that night still appear in Max's daydreams sometimes. It was before that awful camping trip, before Isobel's blackouts, before Rosa – before all the secrets and lies and trauma began to sink the three of them like quicksand, tying them together in the same mess but keeping them just a little apart, never quite able to reach the others in order to make it out together. Back then, he honestly believed that if the three of them just stayed alongside each other, they could take on the whole world.

After a while, once the laughter faded and they each had some time alone with their thoughts, Liz spoke again. This time, her voice was softer, like she wasn’t sure if she should talk about this, "you told me before that you and Isobel were adopted, but Michael ended up in foster care. But that means… you got separated at the group home, right?" She was looking right at him, but Max couldn’t bear to meet her eyes. He just nodded shortly. "How long was it before you guys found each other again?"

He looked down at the floor, then gave Liz a sidelong look. She was snuggling into one of the blankets that he'd brought with him, wrapping it around her tightly. It was early evening, but the chill of the night had already begun to enter the scope of the cave. It was always colder down there. Max remembered that from his very first night out of his pod. He had no memories and no language, yet by some guidance he felt the need to reach and crawl his way out. The very first thing he felt in his mind was Isobel's presence, warm and comforting and familiar without thought; the very first thing he felt on his exposed skin was the crisp chill; the very first thing he saw was Michael's face, confused but strong, questioning yet somehow reassuring at the same time. When they got out of the cave, he could feel the shift of temperature on his skin, the way everything stung a little less, and he knew with every fiber of his being that he wanted to protect them no matter the cost.

He had no memories, no language and no knowledge of where or who he was, yet somehow, everything felt clearer back then.

When Max finally musters the composure to answer without faltering, his voice is quiet. "After we left with our parents, it was three years, nine months and eight days before we saw Michael again." He looked over to Liz, tried to read a reaction on her face, but she just listened, attentive, her eyebrows just slightly knit, so Max continued.

"You know that Isobel and I are sort of… connected, right? In our minds?"

"Yeah. Michael told me about it, when all of this started," she said. It made Max wonder what else did Michael talk to her about. He could see that they've gotten closer these past few weeks, bonded by intelligence and circumstance and something else, too, something Max couldn’t quite put a name to. He supposed that's what made Liz ask about Michael in the first place.

"Well, it's not just Isobel. We're connected to Michael, too – both of us. It's different, though. I don’t know if it's that different for Iz with him, but it is for me. Their presence doesn’t feel the same to me." Isobel always felt like the missing pieces of the puzzle, the other side of the coin, that place on the couch that made you know you were finally home; Michael felt like a mirror to his face – not that they were the same, god knew they weren’t, if there even was a god – but Michael's presence was unfaltering, always reflecting everything he did back to him without glamorizing or numbing the harsh lines, and while Max didn’t always like what he saw, nothing quite made sense without him.

"for the first six months, every single night Isobel would cry. She would huddle on the floor in the corner of our room and sob. We couldn’t even speak yet, but I could feel her… her concern, her desperation," it wasn’t the kind that drowned you. It was the kind that burned and dried you out, reached into you and hollowed you from the inside, leaving you completely empty. "I would sit by her side, holding her close, until she fell asleep and my dad could carry her to her bed. My mom tried to calm her down once, tried to sooth her, but Isobel flinched. That night was the first time I saw my mother cry."

"What about you?" Liz asked softly.

"I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to stay strong, for Isobel, but we could both feel that Michael wasn’t close, that he wasn’t safe, not like us – and it drove us mad with worry." Max huffed the words out quickly, cutting through like knives in his throat, but now that he started, he found it hard to stop. "At night I would lie awake and wonder where he was, how we can find him again. I think I dreamed into his mind sometimes – I was very young and I didn’t understand it back then, but sometimes I'd see walls of a house I've never been in, I'd dream terror or pain, I'd see hands coming down too close to me, too fast, and…" he was so angry at the memory that he couldn't even bring himself to finish the sentence. He took a deep, stabilizing breath.

"Other nights, I'd dream he was so far away that I never found him again. As I got older and realized all the dangers for us out there, I'd dream he was dead. I'd dream he was locked away somewhere. I'd wake up covered in sweat, tears streaming down my face, and search my mind for his presence until I could feel for sure that he was still somewhere out there. Isobel stopped crying eventually, but we never stopped thinking about him. Never. Every night, after lights out, she'd ask me where I thought he was now, or I'd tell her I could still feel him and she'd go all quiet and whisper, 'yeah, me too,' like she was reassuring herself just as much as me."

"Every single night? For four years?" Liz sounded stunned and sad. Max just nodded. He couldn’t find the words to tell her how much it had hurt. If he and Isobel were two halves of a puzzle, then Michael was their frame, and without him it felt as though the slightest of winds could make them fall apart.

"So how did you guys find each other again?" Liz finally asked again. He wasn’t sure, but he thinks her eyes look a little wetter than usual.

"We didn’t, not really. One day we were walking down the street with my mom, and we just… felt him suddenly. We started running, we knew he was near. My mom called after us, but it was like we couldn’t hear her. We turned the corner and there he was. We all cried, we were so relieved. My mom was really shaken – I was eleven, she hadn’t seen me cry in at least a year. Later Michael told us that he snuck out as soon as he got back to Roswell, that he could feel us too. Like he was led in our direction."

They go very silent after that, each lost in their own thoughts. Max takes deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He couldn’t help but ask himself how could it be that he'd found Michael only to lose him again. After a while, Liz said, "Thanks. For telling me, I mean. I didn’t think it would be this hard for you."

"It's okay," He said, and it was; talking about it still hurts, but it also grants him clarity.

"Michael loves you, you know," Liz told him simply, and he wondered, not for the first time, if she's got an ability to see through him or if he's just really easy to read when he's around her. Probably a combination of the two. "He loves both of you more deeply and intensely than I've seen anyone love in a very long time."

"I know. I know he does. It's just…" Max struggled to put his words together, "Sometimes I fear that I've let too much pass between us. Even after that camping trip, up until…" he trailed off. There's no need to say it; she knows. He cleared his throat, mad at himself for even coming close to the subject that he knows still hurts Liz fresh. "We always talked. About everything. We fought, and sometimes it was tense between us, but I think maybe that's just how it is with Michael, you know? He's all rough edges and he never pulls a punch. But he was my brother, my best friend. I could go to him with anything, there was nothing I couldn’t tell him. Now I always feel like I let him down somehow. It's like everything that's happened left a rift between us and I don’t know how to bridge over it."

Max didn’t even know why he was telling her this. Liz just had the ability to pull honesty out of him. He was never sure if it was the way Liz always seemed completely focused when he spoke, or the way she was interested but didn't push, or the way her dark eyes seemed to offer comfort and understanding, but he just felt raw and open when he was around her.

"You know," She said after a moment, looking him straight in the eye, "I get the feeling I'm not the one you should be talking to about this." He laughs, short and just a little pained. "Seriously, Max. It's not too late. Now, what do you say we get out of here? I've got a little green man shake with your name on it. Extra cherries are on me."

Max smiles at her, small but genuine. "Sounds good. Just… two more minutes, okay?" He looked over at Isobel one more time, serene and motionless in her pod. Liz had to be right. It wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be.

**Author's Note:**

> That's it! I love getting into the pod-squad family business, I just adore their relationships with each other. Hope you guys liked it, and feel free to leave a comment, I love comments!  
> You can also visit me on my tumblr: wish-on-a-wing


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